Bloods season 2 review: Sky’s paramedic sitcom with Samson Kayo and Jane Horrocks is funnier than ever

There’s a kind of easygoing confidence to the new series of Bloods, which starts March 16 on Sky and NOW TV. The paramedic sitcom – think something not a million miles away from a better version of Brooklyn 99, translated to a UK comic style and sensibility – moves in quite a self-assured way, the feel of a returning series that knows exactly how good it is. And it is very good – one of those shows that are difficult to write about, because you really just want to transcribe the jokes into a bullet point list with “just watch it already” thrown in a few times too.

One thing that immediately jumps out about Bloods, though, is that it’s built around four perfectly calibrated comic double acts. The paramedics all work in pairs, and that’s mostly how we find them, with episodes intercut between them as they respond to different emergencies and injuries. The ensemble is mostly kept separated from one another (there are very rarely any Superstore-esque breakroom scenes bringing everyone together) but you don’t tend to feel that distance – each character sparks off their partner so well that Bloods is as funny as four different sitcoms rolled into one.

It’s difficult to highlight just one of those double acts, really, each of them having reason enough to be described as the funniest part of the show. Bloods is one of those shows where any review quickly becomes self-contradictory: Aasiya Shah is the funniest, actually no Sam Campbell is the funniest, actually no Lucy Punch is the funniest, actually Samson Kayo is the funniest, and round and round in circles you go for hours and hours. (Actually, it might be Kevin Garry that’s the funniest. He’s really good. Although, so is Jane Horrocks…)

In each case, though, Bloods’ second series gives a nice sense of their character dynamics having evolved since the first, a natural extension of what we’ve seen already – that aforementioned confidence is borne at least in part from how comfortable everyone clearly is with their characters now. Not that things are static, though, or anything like that, because Bloods series 2 does a clever job of drawing in new characters to disrupt the double acts: Nathan Foad is perfectly irritating as Wendy’s son Spencer, and Katherine Kelly’s mental health professional George is a fantastic foil to Lucy Punch’s brusque co-ordinator Jo.

Ultimately, it’s a very endearing, very charming programme – but more than anything else, Bloods is a very funny programme. That’s actually funny, not just slight-nod-while-you-exhale-through-your-nose funny. Series 2 is even better than series 1, and it’s well worth your time.

Bloods 2 starts streaming on Sky Comedy and NOW TV  from Wednesday 16 March 2022. I’ve seen the first three of a total of five episodes of Series 2 before writing this review; you can read Hiyah Zaidi’s interview with Jane Horrocks and writer Nathan Bryon right here.

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